Mozilla to issue frequent, small feature changes, drops Firefox 3.7

Update:Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate 2 is out. With this you can be sure we will have the new milestone finalized before the end of the month. In the meantime, developers have also had their fair share of notice among the delays to get add-ons ready for the next installment, usually the number one reason for not upgrading immediately.

Modifying its development strategy, Mozilla will drop Firefox 3.7, and plans to issue incremental feature changes along with security updates every four to six weeks. Version 3.6 is still coming by the end of January, and Mozilla made the first RC build available last week.

The decision came from working on Firefox 3.6. "We learned an awful lot about what slows down our schedule, and that will help us plan for future releases," said Mike Beltzner, director of Firefox. One of the first additions planned after 3.6 is the separation of plug-in processes from the browser (not Electrolysis in its entirety), and there is a focus on Adobe Flash because it is responsible for more Firefox crashes than any other plug-in.

This approach will be "a huge advantage to users" as they will receive useful additions more frequently, and Mozilla can bypass the time-consuming beta cycles that come with larger releases. Not everything will trickle out in a security update, though, with changes such as the interface revamp for Windows Vista and 7 still requiring beta testing.